This background description is provided for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Unless otherwise indicated herein, material described in this section is neither expressly nor impliedly admitted to be prior art to the present disclosure or the appended claims.
As computing devices evolve with more computing power, they are able to evolve how they receive input commands or information. One type of evolving input mechanism relates to capturing user gestures. For instance, a user can attach a first peripheral device to their arm or hand that reads muscle activity, or hold a second peripheral device that contains an accelerometer that detects motion. In turn, these peripherals then communicate with a receiving computing device based upon a detected gesture. With these types of peripheral devices, a user physically connects the peripheral device to a corresponding body part that performs the gesture. However, this constrains the user, in that the user must not only acquire these peripheral devices, but must couple them to the receiving computing device. Thus, it would be advantageous to capture various gestures without attaching a peripheral device to the user.
Further, a computing device may allow a user to authenticate themselves in a variety of different ways in order to access the device or applications executing on the device, such as by gesturing or entering a password to unlock a laptop, receiving fingerprint sensor data to unlock a smartphone, using a microphone to recognize the user's voice, using a camera to recognize the user's face, and so forth. However, in many cases, the user would like to be authenticated without touching the device, or to be authenticated without any type of active interaction with the device to allow for seamless access to devices and applications, while at the same time preventing certain people from access. One way to authenticate users includes using a camera to capture video or photos of a user. However, using a camera to authenticate users may result in a loss of privacy for users who do not wish, or expect, that their photo will be captured.